Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/438

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.

The Development of a People. There still lingers a sort of fatalism about the views of many people in matters of economic and spiritual development. Things are judged to be as they are because, in the absence of intelligent study of the problem, it is thought that they cannot be otherwise. Nowhere is there more need of real facts and clear thinking than in answering the many questions that concern the American negro. All will agree that every negro should, in the inter- ests of every American, make the best of himself ; but this is only the statement of a very complex problem. What are our standards? What is a satisfactory rate of development for an enfranchised people? Should they be expected to learn to read and write in a generation or a century ? How quickly may we expect them to acquire habits of thrift and saving?

Peoples in their development pass through four stages ; not in succession, for the stages are more or less simultaneous, with shiftings of emphasis as time passes. These periods are : a struggle for physical existence, the accumulation of wealth, the education of the young, and the wider culture-contact of spiritual intercourse with the world. One phase of activity may not be suspended while another continues, but all in some degree and in some fashion must go on together. Guidance may be given by parents, by leaders, by the prevailing ideas of the society, by tradition. Let us notice these great means of growth among the American negroes. The pitiful degradation of many of the blacks in the cotton kingdom is not to be explained by the forces that today are keeping them down, nor by inherent inability to rise, but rather by the nearly four centuries of slavery which elapsed between the importation of the first slaves into Portugal and the checking of the slave trade in the early years of the last century. During these centuries the great and good of the earth seemed to unite in the effort to make prosperous the traffic in human beings. Pope Alexander VI., the thrifty Dutch, Oliver Cromwell, James I. all lent it their support.

American slavery was not simply forced labor, nor toil without pay ; it was the destruction of the African family and of all just ideals of family life. The effect of which this was the cause is seen in the family life among the colored population today. But many have risen above this degradation, although few have escaped the lack of foresight which the life of slavery taught them. And then, too, the complete break with past centuries of tradition and tribal experience which enslavement meant has produced a peculiar lack, which the economic revolu- tion of emancipation accentuated, which can only be filled by the growth of a cultured class among them, who shall interpret the significance of the twentieth century to a people without a past upon which to build. Recurring for a moment to the means for a people's guidance, mentioned above, we find here a group of people in which every one of these great sources of inspiration is partially crippled : the family group is struggling to recover from the debauchery of slavery ; the number of enlightened leaders is small ; the surrounding and more civilized white majority is cut off from its natural influence by the color line ; and the traditions of the past are either lost, or are largely traditions of evil and wrong. Under such conditions is the progress which has been made not surprising?

In order to secure negro advancement, help of several sorts is necessary. Trained guidance in matters of civilization and ideals of living must be furnished them. Their family life must be elevated by bringing home to them the morals of sane and sanitary living. Such help can come only from trained leaders of their own race, who shall be to them priests and interpreters of civilization. Further- more, the mass of negro children must be given the means of a good elementary education. A decent public-school system in the South, aided by the national

422